Local hockey hero T.J. Oshie pays a visit to Warroad, Minn.

It was a twist of fate that led a 15-year-old hockey player named T.J. Oshie to enroll as a sophomore at Warroad (Minn.) High School in 2002. 

Here is T.J. as a member of Team USA at the Winter Olympics in 2014

His parents, Tim and Tina Oshie, of Everett, Wash. (near Seattle), had just gone through a divorce and agreed to go their separate ways. 

Tim Oshie had family and hockey connections in Warroad. A cousin, Henry Boucha, reached out.

 

This is the photo that was used on the Henry Boucha rookie trading card in 1973, when he played with the Detroit Red Wings.

As a child, T.J. enjoyed visiting the Boucha home during the winter. There was a small ice rink in the backyard – a flooded garden with railroad ties on the edges and lights strung from two-by-fours. 

At age 10, T.J. would skate there at all hours of the day and night. “There was one time I couldn’t sleep. I remember going out and putting on my skates and skating on Henry’s rink from about 4 until 6 a.m. before everyone woke up,” he said. 

“And that’s still, to this day, maybe my best childhood memory,” T.J. said.

 

“Warroad is the most special place for any kid to grow up in. My only regret is that I didn’t move here until I was 15.” 

More than 4 million people live in the Seattle metropolitan area, and the Oshies were about an hour and 15 minutes away from an ice rink. “We’d have to pay $20 for 40 minutes of ice…before school,” T.J. told sports journalist Ian Oland. 

Warroad has just a shade under 2,000 people. While attending a summer hockey camp in Warroad to “scout things out,” T.J. said he instantly realized that he could just walk to the rink and skate whenever he wanted for as long as he wanted…and it didn’t cost a dime. 

Moving to Warroad “was kind of a no brainer for me,” T.J. laughed. 

He said he was awed by watching the Warroad guys skate – “these were literally the best hockey players I had ever skated with, here at this high school. I was like ‘Gosh, it’d be so cool to skate like these guys.’”

 

“It was just the coolest thing to come from a very large town where hockey is the last thing on everybody’s mind to come to Warroad where hockey is just a way of life here, and everyone rallies around – not just the hockey team – but all the youth sports in general.” 

The Warroad Warriors team welcomed T.J. He was a “legacy.” 

Cousin Henry Boucha was a star player from Warroad High’s Class of 1969. Boucha went on to win a silver medal with Team USA in 1972 at the Winter Olympics at Sapporo, Japan. Boucha played six seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL), before retiring due to an injury. 

T.J.’s great uncle Max Oshie graduated from Warroad High in 1948. He once scored 12 goals in a single game, a Minnesota state high school hockey record. 

T.J. graduated from Warroad High in 2005. He became a U.S. Olympian, participating with the men’s hockey team in 2014 at the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. Now, he plays for the Washington Capitals in the NHL.

 

The highlight of his illustrative professional career, so far, has been to win the league championship in 2018. As is the custom, each player gets a day “with the Stanley Cup trophy.”

 

T.J. wanted to spend his special day in Warroad. There was a big ceremony on July 24, 2018. The local ice arena was absolutely full of people. The size of the crowd exceeded the town’s population.

 

Warroad reinforces its claim to be ‘Hockeytown USA’ 

By coincidence, Warroad High hockey phenoms and classmates T.J. Oshie and Gigi Marvin were elected king and queen of the “Frosty Festival” winter dance in 2005. 

In a sense, they have continued their “reign of royalty” in Warroad…and 2018 was a very good year for these two hockey mega-stars. 

Gigi won a gold medal in the Winter Games held in PyeonChang, South Korea, while skating with the U.S. women’s hockey team. T.J. helped the Washington Capitals to claim the National Hockey League (NHL) championship and earn the coveted Stanley Cup trophy.

 

The Stanley Cup stands 35.24 inches tall and weighs around 34.5 pounds. It is 91.2% silver. 

The diameter of an Olympic gold medal is approximately 3.35 inches. Each medal is 92.5% silver, plated with about 6 grams of pure gold. 

T.J. took the Stanley Cup to Warroad in July 2018 to share with his family, friends, former teammates and coaches. He wanted every Warroad youth hockey player, from the tiny mites to the high school varsity, to get his or her picture made with the Stanley Cup. 

His words of advice: “Work hard, challenge yourself and always treat people right. Always, always have fun.” 

“With all the state championships and gold medals that this town has, and now a Stanley Cup, there’s no doubt that Warroad truly is ‘Hockeytown USA,’” T.J. concluded. 

T.J. was an Olympian as well. Both he and Gigi represented Team USA at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. Gigi and the U.S. women’s hockey team earned a silver medal. The American men finished fourth.

 

In Sochi, T.J. skated his way into the hearts of American hockey fans with his heroics in an early-round game against the Russians. The contest was tied at the end of regulation, 2-2. An overtime period was scoreless, so the game went to a shootout. 

T.J. emerged as coach Dan Bylsma’s “designated shooter,” scoring four goals in the shootout – two to pull the Americans back from the brink of defeat and finally, the one to win it.

 

Writing for Sports Illustrated, Michael Farber said that T.J. “has more moves than a chess grandmaster.” For the game winner, T.J “slid a puck through Bobrovsky’s five-hole (between the goaltender’s legs) to end a glorious day.” 

“I’m glad it ended when it did,” T.J. said. “I was running out of moves.”

Hockey historian Jess Myers of Warroad tells us that one of the stars on that Russian Olympic team was Alex Ovechkin, who now ranks as the NHL’s third-highest goal scorer in history, trailing only Hall of Famers Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe. 

Ironically, Oshie and Ovechkin now play together in the NHL.

 

More often than not in their seasons together with the Washington Capitals, “T.J. Oshie has taken the ice (on the same line) alongside Alex Ovechkin,” Myers reported. 

T.J. told Myers that the two players never talk about the Olympics’ shootout. “Sometimes other people feel like stirring the pot a little bit, but Ovi’s been respectful, like ‘Osh got us.’” 

“Ovi’s like a brother to me,” T.J. said. “For as good as he is and what he’s accomplished…he’s just a big kid. Kind of a joker…a big goof.” 

“On the ice, I’ve never seen someone who loves scoring goals as much as this guy, or just loves the team to score goals. There have been so many times when I’ve scored that he’s hugged me so hard that I think I need the medical guys to take a look at me. He’s just one-of-a-kind.”